Okay, I have been INSANELY busy lately. I had been traveling for like 5 weeks in a row for work, working parts of the weekend, and then the past two weeks have been absolutely ridiculous as well. So there’s my excuse. Hopefully I can begin writing a touch more regularly if things slow down at work. I have a vacation coming up in December, which I suppose could have either a positive or negative effect on this journal!

At any rate, some months ago now, from mid-September through mid-October, I had a rather unique experience – I sat on a Grand Jury for four weeks. I’ve already mentioned a few things about this in my September 25th entry where I explained how my getting picked was unavoidable, and what a Grand Jury is. I will try not to repeat myself too much, so go there and read the first two paragraphs if you are curious. But the gist of it is that being on a Grand Jury is rather different from being on a regular jury, because you don’t actually hear entire cases like you’ve seen on TV and in the movies. A Grand Jury is for felony charges and exists in order to determine whether there is enough evidence to send a case to trial.

There were a few things that I guess I “took away” from being the part of the process. In general, there are three parts of the experience that I would like to explain my thoughts on and observations about, they include the process itself, the people involved, and the emotions one going through the process experiences.

Let’s start with the process. How did they pick us? Completely at random. If you’re registered the vote, virtually nothing you can say or do will necessarily get you out of Grand Jury duty. It’s a true lottery, unlike Petit (regular) Jury duty, where they can ask you to leave if they don’t like you. So you end up with a rather fascinating cross-section of jurors, especially in New York City. When I say that it was one of the most diverse groups I’ve ever seen, in terms of occupations, race, ethnicity, political view, etc., I really mean it.

So they pick you, and the first day they teach you what you have to do. This consists of a crash course in how to listen to the cases and decide if there is enough evidence to go to trial. This crash course lasted approximately 3 hours. Then, although it wasn’t quite finished, we had to go hear some cases, because they had some that had to be heard that afternoon. Let me just say that in order to truly understand all of the complexities involved in these cases and the laws that they involve could reasonably take the average person 3 years to understand, but they give you 3 hours.

A lot of being on a Grand Jury is waiting around. It’s always a good idea to bring reading material. I’d say approximately 50-60% of the many, many hours I spent in that court room consisted of me staring blankly ahead or at a book/magazine. On the good days, they would know early that they had nothing for us to do, and they’d let us go home an hour or so early. On the bad days, we’d find out that we sat there all day for nothing at around 5pm.

It’s a very odd process. Even beyond the poor scheduling, causing people to wait around for half the time, it’s like something out of the 17th century. 90% of the time the prosecutors presented the evidence without visual aids or handouts. It was just the prosecutor standing behind a podium asking the witness questions. The prosecutor also isn’t allowed to summarize the evidence at the end of the sometimes multiple day long testimony. And you are also discouraged from taking notes, because they say that this might cause you to miss some testimony. And when we were to deliberate? There was no formal voting system. We raised our hands, and then the Foreperson would count the hands and literally ring a bell to let the bailiff know that it was safe to come back inside because we had reached a verdict.

So while process was frustrating, it wasn’t nearly as frustrating as the people. For starters, being on a jury is a great reminder of just how stupid most people really are. For those of us who have pretty good jobs and went to pretty good universities, we are lucky enough to deal with relatively intelligent people. We sometimes forget that these people do not make up the majority. Being on this jury was a good reminder that the majority of Americans are as dumb as rocks. This is, of course, all the more frightening when you consider that the criminal justice system is relying on their inferior intellects to understand and interpret facts about these cases. Many of these people probably have trouble understanding and interpreting the directions on the side of a microwave dinner, much the less something as complicated as a trial.

It was fascinating though to see just how much people’s various life experiences effect (or, perhaps, skew) their perception. For example, there were some people on the jury that just didn’t believe cops. It didn’t matter if there were two or three cops all testifying the same thing, while we were given no reason to believe that they were lying. As far as some of these jurors were concerned, all cops lie. And of course, the defendants were always telling the truth. For me, of course, I was the opposite. Having grown up with my father a cop, and a very honest person in general, I have no reason to believe that most cops lie. While I am not naïve about the fact that some cops lie, I find it rather unlikely that cops would generally lie under oath, and put their careers at stake to send some random guy to jail for selling Angel Dust in Spanish Harlem when he didn’t do it. The benefit of lying in these instances just doesn’t outweigh the potential cost if they’re caught lying.

Then, of course, there were people’s own experiences with what our cases all concerned: drugs. All of the cases that we heard were felony narcotics. Again, my experience with drugs is probably at least somewhat different than most people on the jury. I happen to be rather puritanical when it comes to illegal drugs: I don’t believe in them. I have never used an illegal drug, not even pot. In fact, in college it was my job to enforce rules that forbid drugs, and I had no sympathy for those who were stupid enough to get caught using them. I am a prosecutor’s dream.

Compare this opinion, with the retarded bastard on the jury that wore ked shoes with a marijuana leaf pattern to court a few times. I get the fact that he might smoke pot, and I don’t think he’s necessarily a terrible person because he does. Lots of people smoke pot, and it’s probably not extremely harmful to do once in a while. But to have the audacity to promote marijuana when you’re sitting on a jury to listen to cases involving is just mind boggling.

It was also rather interesting to see how people’s political affiliations affected their views of guilt and innocence. In theory, it never should, right? Whether you’re a liberal or a conservative – if you have a few cops testifying to all of the same facts then the law makes clear what has to be done. We aren’t here to decide whether or not we like the cops or the defendant; we’re here to decide whether or not the evidence warrants a trial. And unless the prosecution is pathetic, they’re not going to waste their time and the tax payer’s money trying cases that have so little chance of winning in trial that there isn’t even enough evidence for the grand jury to send them to trial. In a city like New York, there is plenty of crime without having to make stuff up or try the cases you know you’ll lose. Of course, tell that to the hippies on the jury who thought that everyone was innocent virtually all of the time.

There was another interesting human emotion that I witnessed on the jury: sympathy. Every time a witness testified on their own behalf, except for once I believe, that person ended up having the jury drop the charge against them. It’s fascinating. It doesn’t matter that we just heard three cops testify to exactly the same facts which clearly show that this person has broken the law. The jury felt sorry for these poor drug-dealing addicts. After all, they’re just doing what they have to do to support their habit. Most of these people never intended to be drug dealers, but they got addicted, and now it’s all they can do. These would all be good points, if any of them mattered in any way whatsoever. If a person commits a crime, they have to be ready to face the consequences, period.

Of course, the prosecutors didn’t always help. There was only one case that we heard where all charges were dropped by the jury. In this case, the guy was clearly guilty. We had three cops testifying to all of the same facts, and there was plenty of evidence to at least send this guy to trial, where he should have subsequently been convicted. But a few things went wrong here. First, this guy testified on his own behalf. He made up some bizarre story that was full of contradictions and was completely implausible, about why he just happened to be in the vicinity of the crime. And of course, sympathy from the jury came into play. Add onto that the fact that there are the hippies and the cop haters that are never going to vote to indict. Finally, you have the rational people that might be able to see past the sympathy they feel and indict this guy. They were about 55-60% of the jury. Well in this case, the prosecutor was absolutely terrible. He was an odd guy; he was a poor speaker; he did a poor job of questioning the witnesses; he could not tie the pieces of the puzzle together; and he failed to make his case. Even though I saw that the defendant was obviously guilty, because I was able to put the pieces of the puzzle together myself based on the evidence, I couldn’t help but see that The State had done a very poor job at presenting the case. And while I was still a part of the minority that voted to indict, I could understand why some of the others failed to do so.

And this brings me to my final observation: the emotions that you feel throughout this process when sitting on the jury. For the case just described, there were a multitude of feelings. The first feeling was anger. Because a few members of this jury were too stupid to realize that this guy was obviously guilty, that night he would be laughing with his friends about how he beat the system, and he would be back on the street selling drugs the next day. Maybe he’d sell some drugs to a teenager who had never tried it before. Maybe that teenager would get hooked, and it would ruin his/her life. Or maybe that teenager would accidentally do too much the first time and overdose. So I was angry. I was angry that these people were so stupid; I was angry that this guy was back on the streets.

But anger wasn’t the only thing I was feeling – I was also unbelievably frustrated. During deliberation the jury talks amongst itself, and people can attempt to convince others of their view being true. I explained why it was so obvious that this guy was guilty. But no matter how good my logic, and how obvious I made the facts, these people just didn’t get it. I felt like I was trying to teach a bunch of goldfish how to do calculus – it just wasn’t possible.

After a little while the anger and frustration wore off. Then I was left with a very different feeling: sadness. I was depressed. I was a part of the system failing. You always hear about the system failing in the news or in the movies. But to actually be a part of it – too see its failure in action – that’s really depressing stuff. And there’s nothing I could have done to prevent it. It leaves you with an unbelievable feeling of powerlessness. Even though I’m a pretty cynical guy in general, I had hoped I wouldn’t have to be a part of a case like that. I was depressed for days.

Please try to understand: these cases we were hearing weren’t for traffic tickets. These were all felony narcotics. This means that they were about very bad drugs. We heard very few cases that dealt with pot, and for the few that did, we’re talking about massive amounts of pot being sold – as in bricks of it. About 75% of the cases we heard were either crack, cocaine, or heroin. Virtually all were trying to convict people of dealing these terrible drugs. So I felt like what we were doing there was pretty important, because we were helping to get these dealers off the streets, but sadly it didn’t always turn out the way it should.

I know that this entire journal entry has painted a pretty negative picture of my experiences with Grand Jury duty, and it should. It was more bad than good. But it was also a rather interesting experience that I can’t say I’m sad to have been a part of. If nothing else, I am glad that I could do my part to bring about some justice. Even though I was only one vote, at least my vote was always in the right direction.

Now that Jessica Simpson and Nick are getting divorced, does that means she has to wait until marriage again to have sex with the next guy, or does she have a green light since she’s already been married?